Partonopeus de Blois: Romance in the Making (review)

Penny Eley opens her meticulous study of the creation of the medieval French Partonopeus de Blois by describing this romance as 'one of a group of texts that have existed on the periphery of mainstream scholarship' (p. 1). Her monograph explains why this has been the case and demonstrates how much the study of this romance can contribute to our knowledge of romance composition in general. Although the number of extant manuscripts (seven mostly complete, three fragments, and thirty-three extracts) is similar to that for other romances, the relationship among the versions is complex: Partonopeus exists in three different forms with different endings; some are followed by a continuation that also exists in different forms. This variety has resulted in a 'chequered' publication history (p. 1), which requires scholars to undertake a detailed study of the manuscript history before attempting any sort of literary analysis. Fortunately, thanks to Eley and her team, an electronic version of all the manuscripts is now available online (<http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/partonopeus/frontend3.htm>). The basic Partonopeus story combines material from many sources, including Celtic fairy-mistress tales, the Cupid and Psyche story, dynastic romance, Romans d'antiquité, the Achilleid of Statius, Ovid's Metamorphoses, chansons de geste, the Seven Sages, Marie de France's lais, and the Bible (p. 208). Eley argues convincingly, on the basis of textual and historical evidence, that the first version of Partonopeus was written in approximately 1171 (most scholars date the work to about 1182-85). This significantly reverses received notions about the direction of the influence of Chrétien de Troyes's earliest romances. Eley explains that this first version of Partonopeus already contained an ending, which was rewritten while the author was still in the process of composition to allow for the accompanying continuation. Different variations appeared early on, and about a hundred years after the original appearance of the romance a scribe 'manufactured an ending to produce a neat final page for his codex' (p. 178). Partonopeus, however, seems to have retained a resistance to closure, and this characteristic, Eley maintains, is the very essence of romance composition, one that can be attributed to the early romance association with dynasties: the story of a family was never over but continued into a new generation. The romance is 'a form that is always in the making, never made' (p. 5). Although her emphasis is on how the details of the intrigue clarify the different steps of composition, Eley makes many interesting points about the romance's content. The six chapters deal with the following topics: the odd prominence of age in this romance, a prominence augmented by the doubling of key characters; the fils à vilain theme, namely, the railing of noble characters against non-noble upstarts; animals in the romance; the Anselot insertion; closure; and the circumstances of the romance's composition. Eley's case for Partonopeus as crucial to the history of the Old French romance is persuasive and all the more pertinent for us readers of the electronic age, immersed as we are in constantly evolving technologies to aid our understanding not only of the processes involved in the composition and transmission of literature, but also of the notion of authorship itself.